Lower Archaeology

Something to play with: A multimedia map tour of Berkeley and Rockridge (Oakland), CA.

Unype is ‘a location-based social application platform’, which allows users of other social networking applications (e.g. facebook, Friendster, and (see this post) Ning) to share their locations, embed objects (such as photos, videos and 3D drawings) and information into maps and also build tours of the things they have embedded. The embedded objects (although as far as I can make out not the tours) can also be exported in Google Earth’s .kmz format, and the objects and tours can be linked to and e-mailed.

I thought this could be a neat way to give people a guided tour of a particular archaeological landscape, perhaps tied in to a specific group on the chosen social network to allow for discussion among the ‘tourists’ and the ‘guide(s)’.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any archaeological sites or landscapes (in the sense of ancient monuments or excavations) for which I had enough multimedia to cobble together for a tour, so instead, please let me be your guide on a tour of selected areas of Berkeley and Rockridge in the East Bay Area of California. The photos and video were taken over a series of visits between 2006 and 2007, and so, in their own little way, are an archaeological resource in themselves

Come with me (tip: click the fullscreen option which appears in blue letters on the map)